The Yorkton United Chelsea Under 12 boys' team competed in the Regina Soccer Association's Premier League Cup competition over the weekend.
The Cup Competition is a playoff format open to all of the top U12 boys' teams in the Regina league.
Yorkton United Chelsea drew the UCT Lightning in its first game. The Lightning are currently third in the Regina top league.
Chelsea started strong and an excellent passing play right from kickoff almost led to a goal. Both teams settled in with Chelsea keeping most of the possession but the Lightning taking a number of shots from longer distances.
Halfway through the first half Zac McGrisken scored Yorkton's first goal by jumping on a long throw in from Nathan Cochrane.
Chelsea started to dominate play and were rewarded when Derek Campbell stripped the last Lightning defender of the ball and scored on a breakaway.
Chelsea coach Andy Wyatt comments, "That first half was probably the best we've played all year. Our passing was good. We were aggressive and dominated on defence."
The second half showed that Lighting weren't going to go down without a fight and they pushed to try and get back into the game but the Yorkton defence were up to the task and besides one or two good scoring chances they held strong in their back end and only gave up long shots which were easily handled by the Chelsea keeper Zach Shearer.
Part way through the second half Matthew Mandziuk scored on a well taken free kick and the score ended 3-0 in favor of Yorkton United Chelsea.
Wyatt says, "I was really impressed with our defence this game. Stephen Oleskiw, Nathan Cochrane, Spencer Steele and Matthew Mandziuk stopped the Regina team on almost every occasion. Also, our midfielders like Kaeden Hanishewsky, Michael Dobrowolski and Alli-son Berge hustled back to help our defence out. And whenever they did break through or took shots from far out, Zach Shearer was up to the task and held on to almost everything."
The win advanced Chelsea to the semi-finals of the Cup Competition and next plays July 9 in this playoff format.
Sunday, Chelsea played two league games as part of the Regina Premier League. The first game was against QC United who badly defeated Yorkton at home a week ago.
Chelsea started strong and the game was back and forth for the first half with the score favoring QC 3-2 at the half.
Assistant coach Thor Berge felt Chelsea played very well in the first half. "It was a great back and forth game and the kids had a great effort against one of the top two teams in Regina and possibly the Province," he comments.
Unfortunately Chelsea couldn't keep up that momentum, gave up an early goal in the second half and conceded a few more while trying to press forward to score.
The final score in the match was 7-2 for QC.
Yorkton goal scorers were Austin Thomas and Zac McGrisken.
The final game of the weekend was a league game against the UCT Lightning. Confidence was running high for Yorkton Chelsea based on their win the previous day, but once again, travel and the prior game had an effect on Chelsea's game.
It was a tight first half with Yorkton once again giving up a lot of shots from afar but maintaining some possession and solid passing.
Jaret Porte scored for Chelsea on a corner kick to tie the game up at one.
The second half was disappointing as Chelsea ended up losing 5-2.
Wyatt points out, "The better team won the game. Unfortunately we could not string together passes and gave the ball away far too easily. UCT Lightning is a strong team and if we don't play up to our abilities, we are in trouble."
Matthew Mandziuk scored the second Yorkton goal while Zach Shearer made some tremendous saves during the game.
